Re: Word wrap

From:

platter

Subject:

Re: Word wrap

Date:

Tue, 29 Jan 2002 13:43:33 -0600

Hi everybody,
Thanks for the responses. I think I just confused things by mentioning
the WP word, because it set people off thinking that I don't know the
difference between a you-know-what and a text editor.
So let me just wipe the slate and give a concrete example of a
situation that I run into all the time:
I am editing content in an HTML file (or an email, for that matter).
I decide to go back and change around a paragraph, add some stuff, take
out stuff, whatever. If I have added newlines, or used something like
(setq-default auto-fill-function 'do-auto-fill)
(setq fill-column 50)
in my .emacs file, then I wind up with ragged lines (unless my change
happened to line up correctly, which is a very low probability). At
this point I have to either be happy looking at the ragged lines, or
go back and manually replace the newlines, or run HTML tidy. Either
way, I have to either put up with ragged text or perform a step that
takes me away from the flow of writing text.
This is why I would like some way of having the text displayed
automatically to a certain line length, without having to use a tool
other than emacs.
I could be wrong, but I think this falls fairly within the domain of
emacs because it concerns editing text files.
Does anyone have any suggestions on solving this issue within emacs?
I just have this feeling that someone has invented this wheel before,
and reinventing the wheel is, well, you know.
Thanks in advance,
John
>> Every "word processor" that I have ever used does this
>> automatically, but it seems to be completely foreign to emacs.
> Because Emacs isn't a word processor?
My mistake; implied emacs was a WP.
> If I type email, I use line breaks.
What if you are writing a longer email, and want to go back and change
stuff (see above)? Lines become ragged and if you change something
early in a paragraph, you have to correct more carriage returns.
> If I type a document, I use LaTeX and I use line breaks (they
> won't show up in the final layout).
> I fail to see why you want long lines. I think the problem
> comes from a Unix versus non-Unix history.
Because it is more comfortable for me when the lines are always a
certain length when I am editing. If I never changed stuff, auto-fill
would be all that I need.
> Unix: We create a file and expect tools to show it exactly as
> we created it, line breaks and all.
> Non-Unix (e.g. Windows): Users type in text using some tool
> and save it to disk. They don't care too much about the actual
> format of that file. They expect to view the file using some
> other software and have it look good, albeit formatted
> differently.
> Two different visions of how to do things.
> Peter